


The Father's Mercy

by Too_Many_Seeds



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 01:32:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17633546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Too_Many_Seeds/pseuds/Too_Many_Seeds
Summary: Rook first met Joseph Seed while he stood half-naked in the river. Needless to say that Rook was suddenly very close to agreeing to a baptism for a doomsday cult.





	The Father's Mercy

The first time she’d seen Joseph Seed, he’d been standing half-naked in the river. As she later found out, this was not a rare occurrence.

She’d stood on the ridge overlooking the water’s edge, eyebrows raised while her patrol partner, Pratt, scoffed at the sight in front of them. The members of the new church were congregating around the riverside, watching as a line of people were dipped into the water and emerged with ecstatic expressions on their faces.

“Jesus, it’s like he just gave them the world’s best orgasm,” Staci muttered at her side, cracking her a sly, sideways grin as she stifled a chuckle. He straightened up and sobered as he surveyed the group of people eagerly watching the show. “Well, I think our concerned neighborhood watch doesn’t have anything to worry about this time.” He grimaced, wrinkling his nose as another person was pulled out of the water to a delighted cry. “Except maybe an orgy breaking out.”

“Actually, I heard they have rules about that,” Rook replied, vaguely remembering when that Drubman boy had come to bail out his cousin from another arson charge and had gotten talking. “But I heard the Seed family bought this land, so I don’t know if we can pin them for dunking some heads.”

Staci frowned, giving the line-up of the prospective baptism candidates a long look, pursing his lips in thought.

“They all look like they want to be there,” he said, and Rook raised an eyebrow. She was still pretty new to the case and the county, but she hadn’t realised their willingness had ever been in question. He caught the look she was giving him and grimaced. “Yeah. They look cheerful enough…but there’s some weird rumours about them.”

She hummed.   
“Nothing proven, I guess?”

His eyes flickered over to the far side of the river, where a man in a svelte-blue shirt stood applauding above the crowd.

“Nah, nothing proven,” Staci replied in a soft voice. He cleared his throat, straightening up and placing his hands on his belt buckle. “Well, come on, let’s go say hi. Be rude now to not show our faces.”

Rook felt something like unease in her stomach, and stared across the river, to where an imposing man in camo stood overlooking the proceedings with his arms crossed.

“Somehow, I feel like they’ve known we were here the whole time, Pratt,” Rook muttered, following nonetheless.

They took the path down to the river, twisting corners as they went and passing through the bush and rising foliage on either side.

“Hey.” Pratt gave her a wry grin, but something about the lifted mood felt too forceful. “Fifty says they’ll ask to baptise you.”

She raised an eyebrow. “They do that often?”

He shrugged as they rounded the corner.

“They asked me,” he confessed. “Didn’t seem to take my “Mary wouldn’t be too happy” as a good enough reason to say no.”

Rook gave a quiet laugh, but stifled it as they emerged from the growth into the outskirts of the cultist crowd, the furthest away members giving them curious and partially hostile glances as they sidestepped through to the water’s edge.

Pratt took the lead, hands on his belt as he called out a greeting to the preacher in the river. On the opposite side, Rook saw that the eyes of the two men and woman on the hill overlooking the scene were firmly trained on them.

“Joseph Seed,” Pratt called out, reaching the water’s edge. “Lovely day we’re having.”

The man in the water turned to face them calmly, a welcoming smile peeking out from underneath his yellow-tinted sunglasses. Rook wondered whether they’d fallen in the water yet while he was baptising people - they didn’t look like they’d stay on too well.

“Deputy Pratt,” he replied in greeting, confirming Rook’s suspicions that Pratt had dealt with the man before. “Have you come to join in?” The wry quirk to his lip revealed the joke but Rook didn’t doubt that the offer was nonetheless genuine. His eyes trailed over to her. “Or has your friend?”

She half-raised a hand in a pathetic attempt at a wave.

“Hi,” she said, eyes flitting from side to side, quite unsure as to where it was appropriate to look. There wasn’t really any protocol taught for dealing with shirtless preachers, after all.

He watched her, smiling politely and she wondered if he could sense her discomfort or even if he knew the reason behind it.

“No joining in today, sorry,” Pratt replied, giving a tight smile as he glanced at the remaining line of those awaiting their baptisms. “Just checking up on a tip.”

Joseph took his eyes off her, flicking up to meet Pratt’s instead; amicable and calm as ever.

“No problems, I hope?” He asked.

“Not this time,” Pratt answered truthfully.

“I’m glad,” Joseph said, before gesturing to the water at his hip level. “And are you sure I cannot convince you? Will you allow me to Cleanse your soul of your sins?”

“I’m afraid not,” Pratt replied, voice light but Rook could sense an underlying tension to him. “Already done my Confession this week, I don’t need another one.”

Joseph hummed softly and nodded, seeming to at least respect that. But his eyes moved back towards Rook, warm and welcoming underneath the golden hues of his glasses.

“And you?” He asked, holding a hand out to her in invitation from where he was waist-high in the river. “Will you renounce your sins and be cleansed?”

She stared at him for a moment, watching how the rivulets of water dripped down his bicep to his side and couldn’t help but feel like he would be incredibly warm, despite the chill the water would bring. There was a healthy glow to him that was strangely entrancing and almost made her want to step forward, wade through the river in her uniform to him and step into his arms. If she had been paying more attention, she might have noticed the faintest hints of a sweet, Blissful scent to the air.

“Rook?” Pratt’s voice snapped her out of the moment, shaking her to attention.

She blinked a few times, realising that everyone was still looking at her. Joseph Seed had not moved, still wearing the calm but expectant expression on his face.

“Oh,” she muttered, stepping back and glancing at Pratt, scowling before furtively whispering, “ **We better leave before I do something stupid.** ”

She was close enough to him to hear him snort under his breath, but he thankfully held out a hand, the gesture dismissive to Joseph.

“I’m afraid I can’t be dragging in a soaking wet Probie to the station,” he said, letting her breathe a sigh of relief that she wasn’t going to be the one given the choice here. “No matter how ‘clean’ she’d be.” He nodded at the preacher in the water and gave a cursory glance to the figures up on the opposite side of the river, the two men and woman watching them carefully. “Speaking of, we’d best be on our way. You have a good day, Joseph Seed.”

He turned to walk away and Rook began to follow, but her gaze lingered for a moment, watching Joseph where he stood still in the river, eyes never leaving her.

“And you,” he said, voice soft in farewell. “The offer is always here.”

She didn’t doubt it was, even while Pratt joked with her about it all the way back to the station. He had been surprisingly laid-back about the whole thing; just chalking it up to a normal freeze and even giving her a bit of a pat on the back before launching in for a proper, routine roast of her.

“Don’t worry, Joseph’s got a weird charisma about him,” Staci had told her in a brief lull on the winding road back to Falls’ End. “How else do you think he got such a following?”

Rook quietly thought that his hip to shoulder ratio might have played a part, but didn’t dare say anything.

It gave the crew back at the station something to laugh at too; the story of the green Deputy freezing up in front of a shirtless preacher in the river. Rook was more than a little put-out, retreating to the receptionist’s desk and rolling her eyes at every comment thrown her way.

Nancy, at least, seemed sympathetic to her cause, handing her one of the biscuits on her table. But when she leaned forward, her expression was too coy for comfort, and Rook belatedly remembered the recent evening she’d wasted with the receptionist, who’d positively grilled her in an interrogation to try and figure out her relationship status.

“For recon,” the woman had joked, winking too mischievously for comfort.

Now, there was no mischief in her face, but Rook still was weary.

“Don’t worry, I know what happened,” Nancy said, giving her a knowing smile. “You don’t have to be embarrassed; Joseph Seed is like that.”

Rook groaned, rubbing at her temple.

“Not you, too,” she muttered, standing up and waving goodbye as she went to sign off. “I’m done with you lot tonight - we will never mention this again!”

Nancy didn’t lose the strangely familiar smile, but Rook didn’t linger on it, instead rolling her eyes as she heard Pratt give out a final farewell of the day to the now concerningly catchy “Virgin Rook”.  _Asshole._ She swore that if she came back the next day to work to find out Pratt was still going with it, she was going to call up the Project’s church and tell them that Pratt was suddenly _very_ interested in being baptised.

She was bopping along to an old-timey song, unsure of the lyrics but tapping her leg through the drive regardless; lights on as the sky was lit in the vibrant orange of sunset. She slowly made her way through the winding backroads on the way to the hotel she was briefly staying at - some sort of curiosity compelling her to take the long way around.

It was when she stopped the car that she figured out why.

The door slammed shut as she stepped onto the dirt road, wrapping the sides of her jacket around her in the chilled air of the approaching evening. The rushing water of the nearby river called to her, and she took careful steps down the incline at the side of the road until she found herself on a hill overlooking the water. It was empty now - the crowd had long gone - but she looked across to the opposite bank, knowing that hours earlier, that was where she had stood.

Something was disappointing about the scene, Rook knew, as she made her way down the hill and towards the river with slow, careful steps. The river was a rippling mess of orange, but as she reached the edge, something inside her leapt to life at the sight of the figure still standing in the water.

“You’re back,” Joseph Seed said, though he didn’t seem surprised.

She blinked, taking in the sight of him. He must have left the water sometime in the day - he _must_ have, surely. In fact, it would have been strange if he hadn’t only recent waded back into it, otherwise the chill of the air would have been horrendous.

“You…I…” Rook began, and was mortified to find that she was gaping. She shut her mouth and quickly scanned the river banks for any signs of his churchgoers. “Why are you still here? Where did everyone go?”

He gave a smile she could only describe as almost lopsided, and shook his head.

“Some will have returned to their homes, others to our church compound,” he replied smoothly, meeting her eyes across the water-way with a magnetic sort of intensity. “I am not their Keeper, child. Only a Shepherd.”

She nodded, feeling the spike of awkwardness at having asked a silly question.

“Oh,” she replied, lamely, because of course it should have been obvious that he would not know where all of his many followers had scattered to.

She felt like the silence _had_ to be soul-crushingly awkward, but he didn’t seem to be affected by it; simply glancing up at her while she fidgeted in place. He was the one standing shirtless in water, and yet she was the most exposed.

“How did you know I was going to be here?” Rook asked, crossing her arms over her chest as the wind picked up pace.

“I suspected,” he replied, but his eyes were still in a way that made her wonder whether it was the whole truth. “And I saw your curiosity.” He reached out his arms again, a mirror to the earlier afternoon, and again she was struck by the wonder of his warmth and how welcoming the embrace seemed. “Would you like to be Cleansed of your sins, Deputy?”

Rook was a simple woman. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about religion, or whether there was something innately wrong about reaching forward and taking the hands of the preacher. Or whether it was to allow herself be led into the water to be baptised per his doctrine, but she knew that in the few moments she spent submerged within the river - his arms braced on either side of her - there was a strange sense of peace that she hadn’t thought to ever achieve.

The rushing water above her created the sensation of something washing down her front, trailing away into the current. She couldn’t be sure, but for a brief moment, she let herself believe it was her sins being taken away, as he’d claimed.

It was cold when she broke the surface once more, gasping for breath and clutching at the warmth of his arms. Joseph was a rock of support, a hand pressing against the small of her back to hold her up and keep her close to him.

A trail of water fell down her soaked front, and she glanced up to see his fingers brushing against her forehead; a light, reverent touch. It was with a jolt in his arms that she realised he’d been speaking the entire time; softly reciting a passage, something ritualistic for her, and she felt guilty that she’d been so preoccupied to have missed it.

“I’m sorry,” she found herself muttering, leaning forward into his touch.

He soothed her, impossibly gentle as his hand trailed to her jaw.

“For what?” Joseph murmured, brushing his thumb over the softness of her cheek.

Her mouth opened for a moment, words faltering before she found a strength to confess.

“I didn’t listen,” Rook answered, wide-eyed. “To you, I mean. I’m sorry.” She paused briefly, feeling somehow she still hadn’t explained herself. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply and when he looked at her again, she wondered whether he had heard those words before; something ancient and familiar about them that invoked such an expression of melancholy. How exactly a stranger could call on such a response, she didn’t know, but in the dying orange hue of the sunset, there was something undeniably _spiritual_ and sanctified about the scene that did not make her question it.

Joseph blinked, cupping the back of her neck and coaxing it forward so that their foreheads met; the river water on her own dampening his skin at the contact, trailing droplets down his brow.

“You are forgiven,” he replied, voice soft and melodic for one who preached the word of God. “I am the Father,” he began, drawing back and fixing her with the full intensity of his stare, “and the Father _forgives_.”

The chill of the evening had set in, but it did not bother her as she remained in his arms; trembling but for his heat. This was forgiveness, she knew; clemency for a sin that she did not yet understand.

This was Joseph’s mercy, and Rook had never felt so warm without it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3


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